Background

…An analysis of a former civilisation in the Amazon, nowadays Brazil, reveals concepts which enable a highly efficient handling of organic wastes. Terra Preta do Indio is the anthropogenic black soil that was produced by ancient cultures through the conversion of biowaste and faecal matter into long-term fertile soils. These soils have maintained high amounts of organic carbon even several thousand years after they were abandoned. It was recently discovered that around 10% of the originally infertile soils in the Amazon region was converted this way from around 7,000 until 500 years ago. Due to the accumulation of charred biomass and other organic residues, terra preta subsequently formed giving it a deep, distinctly dark and highly fertile soil layer.One of the surprising facts is that this soil is highly productive without adding fertiliser.

Recent research concludes that this culture had a superior sanitation and bio-waste system that was based on source separation of faecal matter, urine and clever additives particularly charcoal dust and treatment steps for the solids resulting in high yielding gardening. Additives included ground charcoal dust while the treatment and smell prevention started with anaerobic lactic-acid fermentation followed by vermicomposting.The generation of new Terra Preta (‘terra preta nova’) based on the safe treatment of human waste could be the basis for sustainable agriculture in the twenty-first century to produce food for billions of people….

R. Wagner (Germany): New challenges of resource management in the Botanic Garden Berlin by producing and applying biochar substrates

R. Kuipers (Netherlands): A socio-economic assessment of urine separation, with a reflection on the possibilities for Terra Preta Sanitation, for the recycling of nutrients to rural agriculture in the Philippines

M. Bulbo (Ethiopia): TP application in Ethiopia

R. Wolf (Germany): Application of Fermented Urine for build up of Terra Preta Humus in a Permaculture Park and Social Impact on the Community Involved

A quick 90 second video about an effort to map sanitation in Rawalpindi Pakistan

Faisal Chohan, a Senior TED Fellow and TEDxIslamabad organizer, will now continue his mapping work with a related mission: Improving sanitation in order to prevent the spread of cholera—a bacterial infection in the small intestine, primarily caused by drinking water or eating food that has been contaminated by feces of an infected person. The rapid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance that results from cholera can lead to death if left untreated. Read more on TEDx….

Other useful links

About TedxCity.2.0

In the tradition of our TEDxYouthDay, TEDxChange, and TEDxWomen initiatives, comes TEDxCity2.0: A day of urban inspiration. 28 TEDx communities around the world participated in TEDxCity2.0 day on October 13, 2012. We will host our next event in 2013 to share the powerful narratives of urban innovators and organizers, stewards and artists, builders and tastemakers. The TEDx platform will harness the power of people across the globe to encourage them to host a TEDx event, themed “City 2.0. source & more…

Rose George thinks, researches, writes and talks about sanitation. Diarrhea is a weapon of mass destruction, says the UK-based journalist and author, and a lack of access to toilets is at the root of our biggest public health crisis. In 2012, two out of five of the world’s population had nowhere sanitary to go.

The key to turning around this problem is to “stop putting the toilet behind a locked door,” says George. Let’s drop the pretense of “water-related diseases” and call out the cause of myriad afflictions around the world — “poop-related diseases” that are preventable with a basic toilet. Once we do, we can start using human waste for good.

This is a Wonderful 39 page Technical document on covering all aspect of Waterless Urinals and some variants that incorporates
the core ideas.

written by

Dr V M Chariar

S Ramesh Sakthivel

from forward

This Resource Book is a guide that seeks to assist individuals, builders, engineers, architects, and policy makers in promoting waterless urinals and the benefits of harvesting urine for reuse through waterless urinals and urine diverting toilets.

Chapters cover a wide set of Waterless Urinals details

Waterless Urinals

1.1 Advantages of Waterless Urinals and Reuse of Urine

1.2 Demerits of Conventional Urinals

Functioning of Waterless Urinals

2.1 Sealant Liquid Traps

2.2 Membrane Traps

2.3 Biological Blocks

2.4 Comparative Analysis of Popular Odour Traps

2.5 Other Types of odour Traps

2.6 Installation and Maintenance of Waterless Urinals

Innovative Urinal Designs

3.1 Public Urinal Kiosk 21

3.2 Green Waterless Urinal

3.3 Self Constructed Urinals

Urine Diverting Toilets

Urine Harvesting for Agriculture

5.1 Safe Application of Urine 3

5.2 Methods of Urine Application

Other Applications of Urine

Challenges and the Way Forward

References and Further Reading

The book has a solid collection of tables and diagrams that support the text

Among many topics the Doc weighs pros and cons of of traps to prevent odor and gases for escaping .Most of the solutions have cost / maintenance barriers that limit feasibility to particular set of cases. India is a large county and need a variety of solutions as does the rest of the world.

We will will be interested to learn more about Zerodor
“An odourless trap Zerodor which does not require replaceable parts or consumables resulting in low maintenance costs has been developed at IIT Delhi. This model is in final test stage yet to be made commercially available.” more on Zerodor…

further notes from forward

Waterless Urinals do not require water for flushing and can be promoted at homes, institutions and public places to save water, energy and to harvest urine as a resource. Reduction in infrastructure required for water supply and waste water treatment is also a spinoff arising from installing waterless urinals. The concept, founded on the principles of ecological sanitation helps in preventing environmental damage caused by conventional flush sanitation systems.

In recent years, Human Urine has been identified as a potential resource that can be beneficially used for agriculture and industrial purposes. Human urine contains significant portion of essential plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphate and potassium excreted by human beings. Urine and faeces can also be separated employing systems such as urine diverting toilets. In the light of diminishing world’s phosphate and oil reserves which determine availability as well as pricing of mineral fertilisers, harvesting urine for reuse in agriculture assumes significant importance. Akin to the movement for harvesting rain water, urine harvesting is a concept which could have huge implications for resource conservation.

The document is available as a single 116 page pdf or two pdfs breaking the dock in half.

It is filled with hot links to a wealth of reference material. This alone will make the document invaluable. All urls are written out so links retain their value in a paper copy.

The list of contributors is is huge. A nice thing is the main authors provide hot email links at the end of each of the 13 sections so you can easily contact them.

The only problem with such a beautiful document is there is no traditional table of contents or index.

Executive summary from the pdf

“The target audience for this document includes a wide range of readers who are interested in aspects of sustainable sanitation and their links with other environmental and development topics. Possible readers include practitioners, programme managers, engineers, students, researchers, lecturers, journalists, local government staff members, policy makers and their advisers or entrepreneurs. The emphasis of this document is on developing countries and countries in transition.

Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human excreta and domestic wastewater. Personal hygiene practices like hand washing with soap are also part of sanitation. Sanitation also includes solid waste management and drainage but these two aspects are not the focus of this publication. In order for a sanitation system to be sustainable, it has to be economically viable, socially acceptable, technically and institutionally appropriate, and protect the environment and natural resources.

SuSanA contributes to the policy dialogue towards sustainable sanitation through its resource materials and a lively debate amongst the members during meetings, in the working groups, bilaterally, through joint publications and via various communication tools like the open online discussion forum. This publication showcases the broad knowledge base and state of discussions on relevant topics of sustainablesanitation. All of the working groups have published one or two factsheets providing a broad guidance relating to their specific thematic area.

Due to the inter-relationships between the working groups, the factsheets are inter-related and where appropriate, are cross-referenced. The factsheets relate to different parts of the “sanitation chain”, which consists of user interface, conveyance, collection/storage, treatment, reuse or disposal. We have attempted to visualise the linkages between the different working groups and the sanitation chain in the following schematic. There are some working groups which are dealing with overarching themes and these have been placed inthe centre of the schematic.”

“There are functioning examples of dry urine diversion in regions in the world with cold winter climates. The examples presented in the report show that it is possible to arrange agricultural reuse of urine and faeces in large or small scale crop production.”

“The fact that there are only short periods during the year when urine can be used as a fertiliser place demands on a storage system for the urine. There are a few alternatives; one of the most economic may be to arrange storage on a farm, in covered storage containers previously used for animal urine.”

“There are still development needs and knowledge gaps. Some of these are related to temperate and cold climates, such as the fate of microorganisms in urine at temperatures below freezing. However, this should not be considered a major constraint to the development of dry urine diversion, since the risk is relatively low, and can be handled through combination with other hygienic activities.”

The report reprints 3 basic but useful tables from other organizations:

1: Recommended guideline storage times for urinea based on estimated pathogen contentb and recommended crop for larger systemsc (WHO, 2006).

2: Requirements on storage and allowed crops for diverted human urine that is collected from larger systems. (Swedish EPA, 2002).

3: Recommendations for storage treatment of dry excreta and faecal sludge before use at household and large-scale (municipal) levels. The treatments assume no addition of non-sanitised material (WHO, 2006).

Again the report is a quick and easy read, providing a good preface to a much larger document that needs to be written on the subject. The report ends nicely, saying we need more research :

“There are some definite areas where there is a need of systematic research and development (R&D). Some of these, especially related to winter climate aspects, are specified in the following text.

Research needs

One of the most discussed questions regarding urine diversion is the fate of pharmaceutical residues after excretion, and how this affects choice of collection and treatment of human excreta. Research on fate of pharmaceuticals in waste water treatment plants is being undertaken in Germany and Sweden. No known field studies are taking place on fate of pharmaceutical residues when urine or sewage sludge is applied to the soil. The current recommendation to use urine as a fertiliser in agriculture rests on the analysis that the soil system is well suited to digest harmful organic substances due to microbial life in the surface layers of soil. This would be an interesting field of study that can give valuable information on design of reuse systems.

Sanitisation of faeces is another aspect that needs attention. The WHO guidelines on the reuse of human excreta in agriculture mention the alkaline treatment by adding ashes or alkaline substances with a storage time of 6 month ( > 35 °C ) as a possible way to sanitise faeces, or 1,5 – 2 years storage time. The temperature intervals given do not cater for needs in temperate or cold climates, which means that knowledge on treatment of faeces in this region should be developed. Research on more simple and robust treatment methods is needed.

Suggested applied R&D projects

– Establishment of new pilot projects and evaluation of existing projects. Monitoring and evaluation of existing dry urine diversion projects is a costefficient way of generating knowledge. Dissemination of results, regardless of if they are positive or negative, from existing pilots is vital. The establishment of new pilot projects will also contribute to the bank of knowledge.

– Sanitisation of faecal fraction: research on requested storage in ambient or alkaline environment in temperate and cold climates (winters with temperatures far below zero).

– Sanitisation of faecal fraction: research on the implementation of chemical sanitisation of faeces with urea. This is an interesting method, but the practical implications need to be studied and developed.

– Sanitisation of urine: what happens in the urine when it is frozen and what are the implications for storage intervals?

– Pharmaceutical residues: studies of soil system when urine is used as a fertiliser. Effect on microbial community, speed of decomposition. Comparisons with sewage sludge, farmyard manure.

– Toilet design: development of risers and squat-plates for local production. Care given to needs of different users: children, disabled, elderly, men, women. Toilets of today need development since many do not divert as much urine as possible, and are unnecessarily difficult to clean.

– Systems analysis from an economic point of view. Comparison of investment and maintenance costs of urine diversion systems and conventional sanitation.

– Systems analysis from an environmental point of view. How do different activities affect the sustainability of the system, for example fertilisation strategies, choice of tank, joint measures or single toilets?

– What are the economical incentives for implementation of urine diversion? How to design the economical system with the regard to municipal responsibility and financial support/ interactions. How should the systems be organized and which are the most important drivers for the different stake holders.”

This Came up in a google news watch – worthy of noting – originally published in 2006 by Elizabeth Anne Tilley

Absract:

“Phosphorus, like oil, is a non-renewable resource that must be harvested from finite resources in the earth’s crust. An essential element for life, phosphorus is becoming increasingly scarce, contaminated, and difficult to extract. Struvite, or magnesium ammonium phosphate (MgNH₄P0₄.6H₂0) is a white, crystalline phosphate mineral that can be used as a bioavailable fertilizer and can be recovered from aqueous solutions such as digestor supernant. In response to diminishing water resources, increasing nutrient pollution, and largely unaffordable centralized treatment, a paradigm of Ecological Sanitation (EcoSan) has emerged. A central tenant of EcoSan technology is nutrient recovery; by separating urine from feces in the absence of water, urine can be used as a clean, concentrated nutrient source. Urine harvested in this manner is used as a liquid fertilizer with varying degrees of success and acceptance. This research examines the potential of urine to be a feedstock for struvite recovery. By recovering a sustainable source of phosphorus from urine, the prospect of appropriate sanitation and closed-loop nutrient systems, may move closer to reality. In laboratory experiments using synthetic and real human urine, different methods of preparing urine to be used as a feedstock for struvite recovery, were examined. The effect of temperature, faecal contamination, dilution, and headspace on stored nutrient levels was examined. The effect of adding different quantities of magnesium, at different times, on the amount of phosphorus that could be removed from solution, was also examined. An average of 70% of phosphorus could be removed from real urine in the form of struvite when magnesium was added to the urine solution after ureolysis had forced the precipitation of calcium and magnesium minerals; magnesium added before ureolysis began retarded the process. Dilution and the presence of wastewater were found to affect the rate of ureolysis but not the purity of the struvite recovered; recovered struvite was approximately 99% pure regardless of dilution or contamination. Based on a comparison of the results, synthetic urine was found to be representative of the general behaviour of real urine during struvite formation.”